cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/17801651
Hey all,
I’ve been using my fertilizer now for a year, and it’s the only one I’ve used up until now, because I alway was satisfied with it, because it’s both very inexpensive and well formulated imo.
I’m using the Masterblend set, with the solutions pre-mixed for short term use.
I have mixed two “stock solution” bottles, which last me a few months in winter (only for houseplants and my small indoor grow tent) and a few weeks in summer (balcony gardening + house plants).
You can see the ingredients on the bottles on the picture:
They are always stored in complete darkness.
And then I have a diluted solution, with an EC of about 3-4 mS and a low pH, which I adapted to exactly match my tap water and houseplants when diluted to ~1/3. This pre-mix lasts me a few days maximum.
I’ve already noticed a few floaters in summer here and there, but didn’t mind them too much. They looked like small jellyfish or something floating around, but I thought that they might be some precipitation from minerals or whatever.
They got a bit more after some time, and a few weeks ago, I soaked everything in hot bleach water and mixed everything from scratch, because I already had the feeling that those might be amoebae or other microorganisms.
But now, everything is way worse. Just take a look:
Those specs are even in the normal nutrient solution!
A few of my plants have a reoccurring spring tail “infestation”. More like constant house mates.
I even got the chance to take a picture of them fucking. I feel like a pervert now...
No wonder they have such a good time. They’re probably feasting on those mold specs. They’re pretty much harmless and easy to manage, so I just don’t care as much.
Anyway… What I wanted to ask you: What shall I do? Desinfecting clearly doesn’t work.
The root cause seems to be the water. If I wouldn’t pre-dissolve everything, nothing would get moldy.
But of course, I need it to be in a liquid form for proper handling. Other fertilizer manufacturers are able to manage this too, so why can’t I?
Shall I add preservatives to the concentrate, like Isothiazolinones?
Or should I just switch to another fertilizer? If so, which one would you recommend, that is also cheap?
I have some background in chem (not in chem directly,but material synthesis), but absolutely none in gardening.
About stains, yes methyline blue can tell live from dead, but that is not that great of thing, i don’t remember names, but maybe you can find some good examples in the thought emporium yt channel or just in general, you can practically any stains, most will stain nucleus, or at least the nucleolus, and then you can take some good photos, for charecterisation, standard procedure is to check for absorbance, and then check for presence of particular organelles under really good microscope.
But damn the macro shots look good, i never use my macro lens, maybe will try in future.
1 More thing I missed earlier was hydroponics (sorry i did not open the link earlier), on checking, maybe the largest component making system acidic would be the MgSO4, and depending on temperature and solubility of MgOH, that can be mildly acidic (more than other corresponding mild bases)
the fun thing is, there weren’t any “oxidisers”. This is a gross oversimplification, but most things that i wrote are free radical generators, which can oxidise/reduce. About the chelations, most of these should be stable under free radicals, but most organic stuff (read stuff with free easy H+ or other alkali or alkaline earth metals) will have positive ions stripped, generating anions. But most chelates are any way anionic. so most of these would be “okay” (in reality, you may have some singlet donations, or some other fancy substitutions, but your chelates are “stable” enough for that(the forward rate constant would not be high)). If you dont want to add anything, then maybe consider electrolysis. For this I would recommend finding SRP (Standard reduction potential, fancy way to put how readily they want to reduce, if you really want to do fancy, find the concentration, diffusion and gas overpotentials too for really accurate calculation) for all ions involved. when you electrolyse a salt solution, lets say MgSO4, NaCl, and H2O, (I am pulling values out of thin air here, dont take the result here, just the methodology), and suppose Cl- is more readily reduced among Cl-, SO4 2-, and OH-, and H+ is more readily reduced among Na+, Mg+ and H+, then H2 and Cl2 will evolve, and you would be left with a basic medium. This way, you would have in-situ Cl generated which can kill anything. but you can control rate by controlling the current (voltage would be determined mostly by srp). This is pretty much what bleach has, a Cl in some positive valency, which will readily oxidise anything, but with bleach, you can only control concentration, here you can control both conc and current (that is rate) to figure things out. Experiment with this if you have time, and this can be cheap (for a cheap setup, you require table salt and a 5 volt battery with rheostat). For stability of chelates, you can look up ligand exchange energy, for standard stuff, you can very easily find values.
Yes it will kill everyone, good and bad guys. But for good guys (and considering it is hydroponics) - maybe you can add a small amount of algae later on. Be wise in its addition, as it can very easily bloom in such nutrient conditions. This is, in case you ever want to venture into aquaponics. I don’t think you require much bacterial culture anyway, if you do, I would recommend to maintain some good strains, and add later